It’s the last game of the pool, it’s Thomond Park, there’s a forecast for manky January rain, and there’s a quarter-final spot on the line. It’s the Munster Way®.

Last weekend’s losing bonus point loss makes this game a simple one – win, and make the quarter-finals. Achieving a home quarter-final off our own efforts alone went with that defeat in Paris, so we’ll need a bonus point win and some favours elsewhere to make that happen but let’s get that W first, eh?

Getting that W off Castres in Thomond Park won’t be the most difficult must-win game Munster have ever had but the context of the game makes everything possible. Taking on Castres will be broadly similar to when we played them in the Stade Pierre-Fabre in round one.

For reference, you can have a look at the Red Eye from that game, and the GIF Room about Munster’s attacking issues in that game.

Most of the things I mentioned in the Red Eye still apply but I have noticed a few other things in the interim that I’ll add to this one.

Before we get to those, let’s see who Castres have picked.

Castres: Geoffrey Palis; Kylian Jaminet, Thomas Combezou, Robert Ebersohn (captain), David Smith; Julien Dumora, Rory Kockott;
Antoine Tichit, Jody Jenneker, Damien Tussac; Alexandre Bias, Thibault Lassalle; Yannick Caballero, Steve Mafi, Alex Tulou.

Replacements: Kevin Firmin, Tudor Stroe, Daniel Kotze, Victor Moreaux, Baptiste Delaporte, Yohan Domenech, Yohan Le Bourhis, Afusipa Taumoepeau.

One might have expected to Castres to go light for this one as – barring a miracle – they don’t really have a shot at qualifying from this pool in any guise but they’ve gone for a fairly strong selection. They’re missing Ben Urdapilleta, Mathieu Babillot, Florian Vialelle, Ludovic Radosavljevic, Anthony Jelonch & Armand Battle from the 23. All of these might have started or featured on the bench under different circumstances but even with them missing, I’d be loath to label this a classic French away day selection.

My eye is drawn to two selections. Their 10 for the day is Julien Dumora, who scored against Munster in round one, but who is nominally a fullback. This might limit their game management and distribution from 10 and will definitely put the bulk of the precision kicking on Kockott’s shoulders. The other selection that stood out to me was Alexandre Bias in the second row. The few times I’ve seen him in the second row for Castres have all coincided with set-piece trouble and I’d back that to continue if he’s scrummaging on the loosehead side against Jean Kleyn and Stephen Archer.

But the real benefit might be in the maul.

The Heave

Munster didn’t really maul well against Castres in round one. We were missing Jean Kleyn, Gerbrandt Grobler and Darren O’Shea at that point and, while Sean Flanagan was an able cover guy, he just doesn’t have the power we needed alongside Billy Holland. It really showed in that game, especially when Robin Copeland stepped into the ‘row in the second half. Castres mauled eleven times successfully and had us under near constant pressure. We only managed five mauls and lost one of them.

Selection aside, we’ll have been disappointed with that aspect of our performance in round one – especially seeing as how maul defence is a real issue for this Castres side in my opinion.

Against Racing 92 in round 4, they conceded three tries directly from the maul and looked vulnerable any time Racing got the ball down.

A lot of that came down to bad defensive reads;

Look at that space behind the Castres jump pod! Racing will be livid that they didn’t just power through that the minute Nyanga hit the deck. They had a 5 on 1 maul going thanks to the lone Castres defender that immediately bound on Nyanga but Racing’s slow set up speed (5 seconds, almost) gave Castres a decent chance of repelling this.

However that Racing setup error didn’t prevent them from gaining good ground.

Whenever I see a team getting ground out against the grain, I wonder about their maul conditioning. You can see Castres trying to angle their maul defence infield, and that comes directly against Racing’s drive, which is angling towards the corner flag.

Castres got their counter-shove in first, but still couldn’t stop Racing “pushing against the grain” and pulling Castres along for the ride.

You can see Mafi and Caballero trying to slide around the back to spoil Chat’s possession, but all they end up doing is helping Racing’s angular momentum before Nyanga feels for the weak spot and surges into space.

Castres just splinter. Look at the body positions right at the start of the GIF for an idea of how badly they got ground here.

Bad lineout jumping, bad counter-shoving and bad mauling.

When Bias came on as a second-row replacement, their maul defence got more erratic still.

Have a look at this GIF – link – which I won’t embed because it’s 25mb in size and I don’t want to kill your data if you’re on mobile.

I’ve highlighted Bias in this still image, so you know who I’m talking about.

You’ll see him biting at the back of that maul – that is to say, hitting it repeatedly rather than bracing and pushing – and generally not adding much in the way of heft to the maul defence. Bias is 36, 6’4″ and 16 stone at the very most so I wouldn’t expect a lot of grunt work from Castres starting #4.

If we can get the ball down off the lineout we should be able to drive these lads all day and hopefully stuff any maul they look to get going early. We should have a power advantage here.

Caballero will be the main man for Castres in the lineout on both sides of the ball, with Lassalle and Mafi rounding out their options. Any ball they really want will go to Caballero, I think. He’s light, he’s good in the air and he gives them a dynamic aerial option all through the line. Castres will be aware of their mauling disadvantage so I think they’ll play a lot of ball off the top in the middle and at the back, which might be tough in the projected weather conditions.

Phase Play

The issues with their defence are pretty similar to the Red Eye report from October. This time around, I think Munster are in a much better position to work these lads in a way that can produce tries. In round one, our attacking game was still a little off where it needed to be. We had guys just coming into the team, Tyler wasn’t playing well at 10 and we didn’t have that certainty that you need from ruck to ruck that six months of drilling, training and playing give you.

Look at this as an example;

Kilcoyne doesn’t know if he’s supposed to take a pass, an offload or hang back to clean. You can literally see him slow down as he tries to read what’s happening and he ends up missing a cleanout on the Castres #8.

If we bring the attacking heat we brought to the Racing game in Paris, we have it in us to run these guys, gas them and then break them.

Look at what an application of width did for the Tigers in their fixture against Castres in Welford Road.

Ford’s distance from the ruck as first receiver is the thing here – Tigers know that to get their front five working in the middle of the pitch, they need to wide early.

Forget about Genge’s carry infield when there was a three-man overlap outside – the key thing here is how ragged Castres’ chase across the pitch is and how Tigers beat them on the attacking fold.

Watch for Youngs wide, medium range pass on the next phase;

That gives Leicester the time they need to get the ball into the flooded tramline and attack Castres’ edge defence.

When you stretch Castres wide like this, you get the reward on the next phases, even if you don’t manage a massive line break.

Whenever you move Castres across the pitch, there are almost always gaps on the openside reverse play, especially around the seam’s between forwards and backs that are usually guarded by Caballero and Combezou;

I’ve highlighted this game against Leicester, but I’ve seen the same issue spring up in the Top 14 and in the Racing game in Paris.

In fact, I noticed another defensive gimmick of Castres in that Racing game and, as they have the exact same backrow in this game as they did in that one, I think it’s pertinent. They tend to shoot hard on openside plays that are headed towards the middle of the field.

Here’s Mafi doing it when he feels threatened by the space Nakawara has on the ball.

That’s a fairly risky shoot when there’s a lock inside him and a 10 riding very narrow outside him. He’s let off the hook by a poor option from Nakawara, but that urge to shoot caught my attention. Isn’t it a risky option away from home against a team of offloaders to give them an alley to play into like that?

Here is is again;

Their hooker looks to cut off Chat’s potential pass options, but they were never there anyway. A pull back pass from Chat here (something Munster have brought into their game in a big way over the past few months) could have opened up that huge space in the middle of the field.

Castre know they have a pace problem in their pack – Caballero is the only one with serviceable mobility – and that means that they are vulnerable to getting caught on big openside plays like this, especially off scrum and lineout plays.

Look at how long it takes Castres to get off the ground after this scrum, which they actually to get the nudge on.

That’s SEVEN seconds between when they hit the deck after the scrum and get back into the line. It’s just 8 minutes into the game.

When your forwards have this pace problem, you have to shoot in the middle of the pitch to cut off the wide areas of the pitch, where you’ll get caught numbers down on the openside, as Castres often are.

Look at the shooting here;

On the next phase – which goes wide – they don’t have the same need to cut off the numbers even though they’re still facing an overlap situation.

No shoot, even though there’s a 3 on 1 down the tramlines for Racing.

When the ball comes back inside on the next phase;

Another hard shoot by the hooker. Why is that?

Because two passes have exposed this on Castres outside edge;

We have the passing game and the wide alignment to expose this in Castres here and I’d expect Earls, Farrell and Conway to have big games in particular, given the way Castres have been defending as of late.

We’ll have to be careful not to start slow though. Even though Whitehouse is reffing, we’ll need to slow their ruck ball at the breakdown rather than the tackle as they’re more than capable of doing this to the unwary.

Quick ball on quick ball gave them real belief early in the round one game and that can’t be afforded here.

I’d be comfortable in kicking at them early on if the rain comes as predicted. We’ll be able to force a few handling errors out of them (at the very least). Forcing handling errors out of them in the rain will be a good option for us – we attack Bias’ side of the scrum and take them on in the maul.

If we work these guys and get them moving, we can score early. The minute this game goes outside two tries on the scoreboard these guys will break. The sooner we can start them thinking about their Top 14 game with Racing 92 next week, the better.

It’s all to do. Let’s see how it goes.